Brent Sadler
Deloitte’s $2.4 Billion Contract to Build Submarines Shows How Badly Misaligned Defense Spending Has Become: Once again Congress is in the midst of a budget crisis that could again result in a government shutdown. Almost on cue, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expressing grave concern about how a six-month continuing resolution to keep government funded will affect the military.
The problem for Defense, however, isn’t just the timely allocation of money. In fact, a recent big-ticket contract shows the argument that we lack money for defense is flawed. What we’re missing is not dollars, but smarter federal spending.
Consider the $2.4 billion deal administration inked in July with Deloitte Consulting to boost submarine construction, by an administration that had claimed there isn’t enough money in the budget to fund two needed nuclear attack submarines.
Deloitte will get $2.4 billion over five years to: “… provide labor, materials, and equipment needed to develop and expand the size and capability of the maritime submarine workforce and industrial base and speed the development of improved manufacturing technologies to supply chain.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of building a new nuclear attack submarine today is $4.3 billion. At a day and age where the Navy’s requirement for submarines is 66 but only has 50. So why not just spend that money to buy a submarine?
For many years subject matter experts, shipbuilders and naval leaders, have all warned of the rising cost to build warships given aging infrastructure, a shrinking labor force, and inconsistent budgeting. So a consulting firm would make sense to help sort that out, right?
Perhaps, but $2.4 billion for a five-year consulting job seems excessive, especially when the Navy is already contracting for help in this regard from BlueForge Alliance at a fraction of Deloitte’s cost. For comparison, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/the-department-defenses-24-billion-submarine-mistake